M. Giant'sVelcrometerThrowing stuff at the internet to see what sticks

Tuesday, June 07, 2005

I Like New York in June

Biggest disappointment of my trip to New York this past weekend: The sleeping thing. You can't sleep in when you have a baby whose daily schedule has him up between seven and eight, eight days a week. And it's not like we can get him up, change him, and go right back to bed together either, like we could when it was just the diabetic cat who had to be ministered to at eight a.m. There are procedures that need to be followed, and by the time it's all over, you're not getting back to sleep anyway. You could grab a nap, but his next bottle's due in 45 minutes anyway. Not that that ever stops me from grabbing a nap, of course, but a nap's a nap. Sleeping until noon is something else entirely. Or so I would seem to recall.

So with Trash and I going to New York for the TWoP summit and M. Tiny staying home with Trash's mom and aunt, I was looking forward to a good lie-in almost as much as I was to hanging out with some of the funniest damn people alive. And then on the first morning, I spontaneously woke up for the day at eight a.m. -- seven Central Time, for those of you playing at home -- and I thought, Goddammit!

So then the next day, I decided to take a short afternoon nap. From which I woke up in excess of two hours later, having missed a chance to hang with some other folks from the site, and I thought, Goddammit!

Now I'm home, and M. Tiny is at my mom's for the night, so I could go to bed early, but Trash is now in Toronto for a librarian conference, and I never sleep well when she's out of town. Goddammit. Plus there's another reason, but I'll get to that later.

* * *

Most pleasant surprise of my trip to New York this past weekend: It wasn't the fact that hanging out and eating and drinking and cracking wise with a roomful of recappers and their friends and plus-ones is a hell of an entertaining way to spend an hour or eight, because that wasn't a surprise. It wasn't the fact that after I visited Strega and Johanna at their hotel (which has a lovely rooftop terrace with a portable bar set up nights, and where I found a wine cork that someone forgot to pick up, which I immediately threw over the railing to see what would happen), I exited the hotel and found my wine cork, apparently undamaged from its fourteen-story plummet to 35th Street, because even I'm not that big a geek (although that didn't stop me from bringing it back home to Minneapolis anyway, just in case I'd accidentally trepanned a pedestrian who had already been cleared away and it was only a matter of time before Gary Sinise showed up with his fingerprint kit).

No, it was the fact that after the reading on Friday night (where we killed, I don't mind telling you), who should come up to me and say hi but the marvelous woman who wants to stage a dramatic reading of The Sisters' Tragedy in New York City. We'd been in contact via e-mail, but in all the excitement of getting ready to go and arranging care for M. Tiny and figuring out what the hell I was going to read anyway, I had entirely forgotten to specifically invite her. So how lovely of her to come out anyway.

It's not that I wasn't happy to see each and every other person who was there (especially you, sweet cheeks. Yes, you, you little minx), but this was a bonus. Especially since that little Vaudeville of mine (okay, a five-act, neo-Jacobean feminist revenge tragedy in iambic pentameter) turned out to not exactly be an easy day's work and I'd made it clear that she would have been well within her rights to look at the first page after Dramatis Personae, say "Fuck this," and drop the whole thing. But instead she's going ahead, and for that I salute her. And not just because I'm hoping she'll sell a shitload of copies in the lobby, either.

There aren't any details yet on when this thing is going to happen, although it should be in the next couple of months assuming all goes well. We'll keep you posted.

* * *

The past few months, I've been promising myself that I'd start updating more regularly after the "non-stop season" of 24 (which thankfully, mercifully, stopped). As well as doing other things I've been letting slide, like answering e-mail and washing myself. But then I was invited to recap the last season of Six Feet Under, and of course I couldn't say no to that. Ah, well. Those other things can wait. Read the recaps, dude, because they're a hell of a lot cheaper than HBO and they contain more of my writing than a week of entries, even back when I used to update every MF'ing M-F (shiver). And, as one of the Fishers might say, I'll be clean when I'm dead.

* * *

Oh, and there was also the pleasant surprise that a Corona with ice and chili powder is, as Omar promised, really good.

* * *

Today's best search phrase "Sock feet mind control." Sure, I'd love to have total power over my fellow humans' every thought, word, and action, but not if I have to put on shoes.

Oh, and you were so, so, so funny last Friday. I would have to say that the midwesterners (you and Miss Alli, natch) brought the funny in a big way. I wanted to some up and say hi afterwards, but I was all nervous--you know, you might have thought it was WEIRD that someone who ony knows you throught TWoP and your recaps came up to you and started asking about your baby and cats, like, HI, I am a STALKER, but anyhow, I sat in the corner and knit through the whole performance and it was just lovely. Thank you for being there. :-)

Couldn't you guys take the show on the road? Don't you have recappers and past recappers in almost all 50 states now? At least you should have regional events, like in CA and the midwest and the south. Then you could have groupies that follow you all over the country, like Deadheads.

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Hi, I'm M. Giant. I'm here because while there's no shortage of people hurling their least
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